Monday, April 21, 2008

Hey You, Get Off My Lawn!

Ray Charles really was a genius.

People who score high on intelligence tests are also good at keeping time, new Swedish research shows....

Researchers at the medical university Karolinska Institutet and Umeå University have now demonstrated a correlation between general intelligence and the ability to tap out a simple regular rhythm...Those who scored highest on intelligence tests also had least variation in the regular rhythm they tapped out in the experiment.

On the other hand, watch out for that old guy that yells at you to keep off his lawn. He is probably smarter than all of you:

An ability to be open to new situations may predict intelligence earlier in life, says a new study, but disagreeableness may predict intelligence later in life...in the case of older cognitively comparable adults, personality traits of openness and extraversion had little or no impact on their ability to retain general knowledge. Overall within this group, personality appeared less important in explaining overall differences in cognitive abilities compared to the younger group.

...in the cognitively superior older group, who outperformed both the cognitively comparable older adults and the younger adults on every ability tested, "agreeableness was found to have a contrary relationship with general knowledge suggesting that a disagreeable nature may go hand in hand with better vocabulary and knowledge retention in older age...

Ray Charles was really good at snapping, said musical acoustician Kenneth Lindsay of Southern Oregon University in Ashland. Charles's snaps that open "It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)" are timed so well that he is never more than 5 milliseconds off the tight beat.